Recruited To Play For The Homestead Grays
At 6-foot 3-inches and 220 pounds (100 kg), Fields played quarterback at Virginia State University in Petersburg but left school when he was recruited to play for the Washington Homestead Grays in 1939.
The Grays were one of the finest teams in the Negro League, winning nine league championships before folding in the wake of desegregated professional baseball. The Grays played many of their home games at the old Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. and some in Homestead, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh. After Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and broke the color line in Major League Baseball, the Negro Leagues began to struggle.
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